The awesome power of position

My plans were well and truly foiled last night. My brother came round, rendering the evening dull and meaning I could not simply sit on my backside and play poker for four or five hours.

I got quite tetchy as the clock ticked on, while we all sat in relative silence saying and doing nothing while the TV twittered. Grrrr.

Even worse; when my mum went off to pick him up, early evening, I played a short, hurried half-hour session, knowing they would come through the door at any moment. That is almost always a recipe for disaster. I don’t think I played bad – in fact, I picked off a bluff nicely which I was proud of – but you just find yourself trying to cram some action in when you know you only have twenty minutes, half an hour, forty-five minutes. I turned in a small loss before the door opened and my heart sank as my frustrating night began.

Eventually brother left, mum went to bed, and I crammed a session in despite the late hour. I played for a couple of hours, winning ninety bucks at six-max PLO and losing eleven by failing to cash in a sit ‘n’ go.

The cash was fine. I switched tables when the first one dried up, and proceeded to run nice at the second, including a straight flush – far less unusual in Omaha than in Hold ‘Em of course. I also picked up at least one good-sized pot with a bare-faced bluff; all hail the awesome power of position!

The sit ‘n’ go was frustrating, as I bubbled out in fourth. I never got any kind of hand at all, but people dropped out fairly quickly and I managed to get to the last four barely playing a hand. We had two big stacks and me and another guy very low. I wasn’t going to demean myself by hoping to just outlast him, especially as he had slightly more chips and appeared intent on folding his way into third if he possibly could. I found a decent enough hand on the button (QQT8 double suited I believe), went for it, and got called by the chip leader, which was almost inevitable.

I had his hand quite well dominated, especially by Omaha standards, but his J9xx saw a flop of JJ9 and I was dead in the water. I was a lot more peeved than I should have been.

However, the emotional control remains good and I am really pleased with my Omaha game at the moment. I’m up more than $750 over the last 50 hours, at 25c and 50c blinds, which is pretty damn good. I don’t suppose it is sustainable; hell, experience tells me it definitely isn’t sustainable. I had a bad run the week before last, but on the whole I have seen my big hands stand up over those fifty hours. I am intrigued to see if six-max makes a difference though; there seems to be far more chance to outplay people, which should be good for results. As long as I am trying to outplay the right people…

One of two specific types...

I’m not sure why I am blogging today, since I haven’t played since Sunday night. I have been out and got drunk the past two nights, and chose to go straight to bed when I got home; I felt I needed the sleep more than I needed to play.

I’m quite pleased with the discipline I showed in doing so. I have proven myself perfectly capable of playing – and often winning – when tired and drunk, but that doesn’t make it automatically a good idea. I should be far closer to my best when I play tonight than if I had gone to bed at like 2am the past two evenings.

I fancy a monster session tonight if circumstances allow it. Not only have I just had two days off, but I am unlikely to play much, if at all, at the weekend – I am heading back up north for a party. I have Friday off work to that end, but to my disappointment could not get Monday off also for a real rest. I’m looking forward to the weekend for sure, but sadly it seems I will be able to see my ex only briefly.

I’ve read about half of ‘Zen and the Art of Poker’ now, and I have to say that it’s a load of crap! Unless there is some gold-dust tucked away in the last few chapters, it will go down as one of the least useful poker books I have read. I totally buy in to the approach that, ideally, you should seek to play with a serene detachment from the results of each hand and the up and down swings of luck. But I don’t think it takes an entire book to explain that, or else it takes a better book to actually make the concept more real and more attainable. I can’t say it’s even been a particularly enjoyable read, either.

So, what are my favourite poker books? Well, an annoying fact is that most poker literature up to now has tended to focus on limit hold ‘em – a game which I no longer play, ever, apart from occasional heads-up games. So my favourite book, ‘The Cooke Collection’ by Roy Cooke, is largely irrelevant to me. Ditto almost anything written by Sklansky or Malmuth. Hell, maybe I should go back to playing limit hold ‘em again, just to have something to read!

I can’t even really tell you whether I’m any good at ring game limit hold ‘em any more. I only ever played micro-limits back in the days when I played at Planet. Maybe I’ll try a small experiment with it tonight, at something like $1/$2. Perhaps $2/$4 at a push.

So, my current favourite poker books would have to be: ‘Pot Limit Omaha’ by Bob Ciaffone, which took me from clueless to just-about-competent almost overnight. And, er… that’s about it right now.

Moving on, I have decided I want to get with one of two specific types of girl. Either (a) a total, drop-dead gorgeous honey; flat belly, slim figure, long (ideally blonde) hair, dresses glamourous and looks after herself, breasts just the right size, probably a pierced belly button; the sort of girl that Every Single Bloke in the bar or pub or club or street gawps at. Or (b) a complete psycho weirdo kind of girl; not unattractive (of course!) but a little bit freaky, unpredictable, sexually perverse, unusually and provocatively dressed, almost certain to be ‘dirty’. Into mad music and poetry and foreign cinema and handcuffs.

So, is that too much to ask? I’ve never, quite, been out with either type. The woman I had my affair with was close to being both – but not quite. Let the quest begin…

Zen

Poker good, life bad. Hey, its better than both being bad, right?

Life is bad for all the usual reasons, topped with the current wave of depression and tearfulness which I still cannot explain, nor shake off. It is probably just the accumulation of ways in which I feel trapped; living somewhere I don’t want to live, doing work that doesn’t interest, inspire or motivate me, having several albatross-worth of debt around my neck.

The weekend was mixed. Friday night was a drunken blast, although I felt like I was going to throw up in the taxi (yikes, not very cost-effective) on the way home. Saturday night I met friends again but felt miserable and tearful. Sunday was quiet apart from a monster snooker session.

I played a moderate amount of poker. Just a couple hours once I got home on Saturday night, and about three hours last night. I won’t go into great detail, but I won another $10 sit ‘n’ go which was most pleasing and ensures I certainly won’t be dropping back to the smallest tables.

Cash play was fine. Last night was interesting actually, for two reasons. First, I sat at a full ring game after numerous sessions of six-max. Boy, was it boring! I definitely threw off some chips early on by trying to boss the table, which is WAY harder to do than at a shorter-handed table, unless you are far more of a bully/gambler than I.

It felt like I was out of position for aeons at a time, and had to fold so many hands that I would have been happily playing in the short game. It probably didn’t help that I went about an hour and a quarter without winning a single hand. That certainly tests one’s patience. Mind you, even online you don’t get THAT many hands per hour (I must check the hand histories and see just how many) and it makes me shudder to imagine playing Omaha live… All that dealing; lots of players in each hand; trying to work out who the hell has won at the showdown… eesh, no thanks!

Anyway, not winning a hand in well over an hour obviously meant I was losing. I was down eighty or ninety bucks for quite a long time (I did lose one rather big pot), and I have to say I was really pleased with my patience and lack of tilt, albeit assisted by playing the sit and go at the same time due to my boredom. I still felt totally in control of my game, and was not playing on because of a burning desire to ‘get even’ but because I really felt there was value in the game.

My patience was rewarded ultimately, with a little burst of big hands that enabled me to quit almost seventy dollars to the good.

It seems a slight shame that I seem to have got myself quite ‘centred’ in my game just at the moment that I finally ordered ‘Zen and the Art of Poker’ by Larry Phillips. Still, I am intrigued to read that book (it should have turned up on Saturday really, curse you Amazon) since it has had ‘mixed’ reviews and at least promises something a little different.

Oh, I played a multi-table tournament last night just for a change, $15 entry, 150 runners. I folded AK suited to a huge preflop raise and call on the third hand, after much deliberation, only to see the flop come all my suit. I took the blow of having missed out on being chip leader fairly well, but it was quite galling! (The two guys had AQ and JJ by the way). I played okay after that, stole a couple of reasonable pots, then failed to take a nice one down that was sitting there begging, and then sat on my hands far too much and became a relatively short stack. I exited in 69th, but it was quite fun and I reminded myself of a few lessons forgotten from not playing one of these for a while. I’ve cashed a few times and still believe I could make a decent score sooner or later if I decide to play them more frequently.

HDOUBLE’s post trying to find poker lessons in ‘Groundhog Day’ inspired me to get my DVD out at last. I watched the fairly good documentary and might watch the whole movie tonight. I am so emotionally raw at the moment that I suspect it might make me cry!

Finally, I think I have sussed out how to add a list of blog links over there on the right of the screen. Its not as straightforward as I would like, but I’ll have a go.